Jesus said, "The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works
than these shall ye do because I go to the Father."
I used to stumble over that. I didn't understand it. I thought what
greater work could any man do than Christ had done? How could any one
raise a dead man who had been laid away in the sepulchre for days, and
who had already begun to turn back to dust; how with a word could he
call him forth?
But the longer I live the more I am convinced it is a greater thing to
influence a man's will; a man whose will is set against God; to have
that will broken and brought into subjection to God's will--or, in
other words, it is a greater thing to have power over a living,
sinning, God-hating man, than to quicken the dead. He who could create
a world could speak a dead soul into life; but I think the greatest
miracle this world has ever seen was the miracle at Pentecost. Here
were men who surrounded the apostles, full of prejudice, full of
malice, full of bitterness, their hands, as it were, dripping with the
blood of the Son of God, and yet an unlettered man, a man whom they
detested, a man whom they hated, stands up and preaches the Gospel,
and three thousand of them are immediately convicted and converted,
and become disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.